The Ramsey Show - App - You Have to Start Dreaming in HD! (Hour 2)

Episode Date: February 19, 2020

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Live from the headquarters of Ramsey Solutions, broadcasting from the Dollar Car Rental Studios. It's the Dave Ramsey Show, where debt is done, cash is king, and the paid-off home mortgage has taken the place of the BMW as the status symbol of choice. I am Dave Ramsey. This is your show. It's about you. The phone number is 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. That's 888-825-5225. Starting this hour, Houston, Texas. Tangela is with us. Tangela, I'm sorry.

I have no idea. Tangela, how can I help? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Ramsey, for taking my call. Sure. I'm calling. My husband and I, we started on our desk pre-journey a couple months ago. We've been watching your YouTube videos and just really trying to get in the mode of things.

We even went to purchase the book, The Total Money Makeover. And we've gotten to the point where it's like a struggle. We were scraping to save our emergency fund. I was putting money into it to purchase the employee stock. And so we took that out. We're able to use that. But then as we look at our budget, it's like we actually need that to get back, to get out the rear. We're always in the rear every month.

Our money going out is like it exceeds what we're bringing in. And there's some things I wrote down. How have you been covering that? Have you been going in debt? Either we go negative. Have you been going in? And then we went. Stop.

We went and got a loan. Stop. Have you been going into debt every month? Yes, we're going into debt every month. And our problem is we're trying to figure out how. I've watched the videos about the log jam, how you've got to blow some things up. We have nothing to sell. It's like we're so excited to get started, but we don't know how.

And it's not because the income isn't coming in. So what is your household income? Okay, so a month I bring home each month. Oh, go ahead. What's your household income a year, the two of you both? $82,000. Okay. $82,000.

And how much debt do you have, not counting your house? $91,000. Okay. We don't own a house. We're renting. Good. Okay. And break that $91,000 down for me.

How much do you owe on your car? On our car, we owe, okay, because we have two car notes. Well, one is we had an accident. Someone hit us. They totaled out our car, so we got a cheaper car after that. We owe $10,500 on that one. And then we're paying the, you know, we had the gap insurance, but it left us with paying $40,000 on that car.

So now we've got to get down to $25,000. Did you say $40,000 or $4,000? $4,000. Okay. So you have $10,000 on a car, $4,000 on a gap problem from a former car. Do you have another car note? No. Okay.

The other car is paid for, or you have one car? We only have one car. Gotcha. And we're paying off the gap. We pay $199 a month. We've gotten that down to $2,400. Okay. And how much do you owe on credit cards?

Credit cards altogether, $1,000. Okay. So what do you got? Student loans must be it. Yes. Student loans we owe like $51,000. Okay, all right. That's $61,000, $65,000, $66,000.

What's the rest of it? And the rest of it is like a lot of, okay, so on a furniture bill we have, we've gotten that down now to a thousand dollars um and then the rest of it is like say a payday loan here um old bills it's like old stuff um that we had um that you're not paying on right now well we're you know some of it right some of it is stuff that had went in credit um into collections in this on our report, and so we gathered it up to add into what we needed to pay. And then some of it is medical bills.

Yeah, let's do this. The things that you're not currently paying on, let's just set those over to the side and deal with them in a little while. And then let's talk about how to do a budget. How much is your rent? Our rent is $1,360. That includes the water bill. Good bill good okay so the way we're going to do a budget is all a budget is is i want you to jump on get the every dollar budget app for your phone or for your computer it's free okay it takes about 10 minutes to do your budget that way and the point is you're not going to go into debt every month

anymore ever again okay you're going to pay what debt every month anymore, ever again. You're going to pay what you can pay. If someone doesn't get paid, someone doesn't get paid. But for right now, the first thing is we're going to balance the budget, and what we're going to do is take the income that you have coming in. Have you stopped your 401K? We just stopped that last week. Good.

Did you get a big tax refund this year? No. We got on our tax refund $2,000 back, and then we took that and we put it on our debt. Got it. That's the debt that we had. You don't want to get a $2,000 tax refund. That means you're paying in $2,000 too much out of your check. So one of you needs to change your W-4 at payroll and bring that $2,000

home, which would be about $150 more a month coming home. So between that and the 401k coming home, now we're starting to, you're not doing it anymore. Those two things will help you start to get the budget balanced a little bit. Now, what you do is you put your take home pay at the top of the page and every dollar has an assignment and we'll just do it in order until we run out of money okay first thing you buy is food and that does not mean eating out you don't get to eat out you're broke right you're cooking at home so we're going to buy food at the grocery store and we're going to cook and healthier anyway and so and a lot cheaper so eating out's a luxury so we're going to put food at the top the second thing we're going to do is we're going to pay your lights and water you don't have to pay water it's built into your rent

the third thing we're going to do is we're going to pay your rent which includes your water okay and we're going right down the list of things that are most important so already we have eaten and we have a place to live that's warm or cool okay so now we live we you know we live to fight another day and then we're going to take care of the car payment because we have to have transportation and then we're going to take look around is there anything else we have to do before we start paying on these bills and then your first goal is to try to go down the bills and pay minimum payments the stated minimum payment on everything else.

You've got a lot of money left over after I did those things. Right. You should have. See, I think, yeah, we should have. We got a lot of foolish things like our cell phone bills for ours and our kids. They'll lose a phone. We'll go get another one. We end up financing that so we

pay three hundred dollars a month on our cell phone bill we pay i told my husband this month we need to cut off cable but he's so worried about the kids not having any well they they need to be i'm worried about your kids too your family's bankrupt and you're spending like you're adam like you're in congress three hundred dollars a month for a cell phone bill i mean i'm a multi-millionaire my cell phone bill is not 300 a month that's out of control so you guys have got to get in here and you got to start chopping some of this stuff out and chopping wood here but anyway you guys make the decisions but if you'll spend every dollar on paper on purpose using that every dollar budget and both of you agree to that and

quit and quit just having these drama things about each individual thing just make the list make the money go and when the money runs out we stop spending you know and it's done that's what you do so um i think you can pay your minimum payments on everything here that you're mentioning if you set the other payments to the side and then as you pay off that smallest one if you can pay your minimum payments on everything here that you're mentioning if you set the other payments to the side and then as you pay off that smallest one if you can find any money pick up an extra job have a garage sale find something to sell anything you can do pay off that smallest one when that smallest was gone take that payment any other money we can squeeze out of this budget and put it on the next one down i don't think you've been doing the budget that way doesn't sound to me like you have.

You still sound very out of control, very discombobulated. Are high health care costs getting you down? Are you confused trying to navigate your options? Do you wish you could find an affordable, biblical solution to your health care costs? Based on New Testament principles, Christian Health Care Ministries, or CHM, helps Christian families, churches, and ministries join together as the body of Christ to share their major health care costs. Christian Health Care Ministries is the original health cost-sharing ministry. A Better Business Bureau-accredited organization, CHM members share to pay each other's medical bills.

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Hey, Rob, how are you? Good, yourself? Better than I deserve. What's up? I'm helping with an FDU class, and I have a couple who the other night were discussing how they pay their bills, and the husband is self-employed, and he was paying their major bills out of the business account for tax reasons, and his wife is really not comfortable with that, and I didn't know what to tell him on the situation. Well, thanks for being a coordinator.

You can't pay your personal bills out of your personal account and make it tax-deductible. Groceries are not tax deductible under any circumstances unless you're buying groceries for a company event but if you buy groceries for personal consumption through your business account it's not tax deductible so what's going to happen is he's going to get audited and he's going to get slaughtered in the audit okay so this is stupid on steroids okay his wife is big time right okay there's several problems with what he's doing but number one it's just a false premise that the stuff just because you write it out the business account does not make it deductible and so that's number one number two don't do stuff just for tax deductions.

That's going to get you in trouble. Number three, when you do not run only your business out of your business account, you can't do accounting in your business to find out how the business is doing. This guy doesn't have a P&L on this business. He doesn't have a budget on this business. He is running this thing out of his ear. All righty. And his business is very poorly operated.

I promise you, after having done this as long as I have, that's exactly what you'll find if you dig into it. So what he should do properly is to set a completely separate account for business, only put business income into that account, and only pay business expenses out of that account. And then the money that's left over is called profit, and when you bring the profit home, you set aside taxes on it, because you have to pay quarterly estimates,

and you then have a clear picture, a clear delineation, between the business and the personal account but um he's either getting bad tax advice or he's had no tax advice because what he's doing is absolutely wrong okay from an accounting perspective a tax perspective and a personal finance perspective there is no win in this situation and i'll throw one other thing in there to look for as you're talking to them. Watch for this. It may or may not be true.

Sometimes when I see guys doing this, it's their way of still violating the baby step principles and going and buying crap they want to buy, but the wife doesn't know it. Okay. It's their way of hiding a secret stash of purchases because they it's over there in the business and she doesn't have visibility to it not always happen but sometimes that'll happen and you'll see that in there too so but yeah this this lady is exactly right and he's exactly wrong let me send you a copy of the book entree leadership to give to him on how to properly run his business.

It's how we've grown our business. I'll send you a copy so that you can give them as a gift from me and you. And, again, thank you so much for coordinating the class. Elizabeth is with us in Chicago. Hi, Elizabeth. How are you? Hi, Dave. I'm great.

How are you? Better than I deserve I'm great. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Thanks for taking my call. I had a question regarding establishing a will and trust for our two children. My husband and I are on steps four, five, and six. And I know you advise for state-specific wills. And we just moved to Illinois from Ohio.

And I wanted to get your advice on, we might not be staying in the state of Illinois. We might be moving out in the next five years for my husband's career. And I just wanted to get your advice on what we should do there. Additionally, the ELP that we spoke to in Ohio said that his assistance with this

would be about $1,000. And I kind of wanted to get your opinion on that as well. His what? $1,000 for his services to help us set it up. Set up a will? A will and a trust. We kind of went over all of our, you know, what we wanted to do to make sure that our children were set up.

I don't have ELPs for legal work. Okay. So it wasn't my ELp you talked to okay i don't know who you talked to but um i don't have elps that do legal work we have elps that do investing and and whether or not elps they're smart investor pros in that case so uh no thousand bucks is too much for a basic wheel that's high okay that's really high three three300 or $400 max for a basic will to put together. It's not rocket science. And, yes, you need to do one in Illinois while you live in Illinois.

When you move from Illinois, you need to do another one. The good news is you will have done all the hard work and have the basic place there, and then you can just take it to an attorney and let them look at it and say, you know, state-specific, what do we need to change from an Illinois will to a Texas will or wherever you move to, and, you know, what differences are there. A lot of times it's how the signature is done. It can be something that simple. It has to have three witnesses and a notary in one state. One state, it just has to have one witness or something like that. It's something like that that will throw you.

So, yes, you do need to get it reviewed every time you change states. And, yes, $1,000 is too high for a basic will. Now, I mean, I got a lot more invested in our estate plan than that, but our estate plan is unbelievably complicated. But you're doing basic stuff. If your net worth is under $5 million, you know, you should have, you know, a will, again, $300 to $500, something like that should get both of you a will in most areas. Hey, thanks for the call. David is with us in Chicago.

Hi, David. How are you? Hey, Dave. Thanks so much. Appreciate you taking my call. Sure. What's up? Well, I read your book and did Financial Peace University in the last eight weeks or so, and I'm on fire to get this going. I need to get Baby Step 2 going. Awesome. I've done a lot of dumb stuff. So I've got a boat.'ve got $88,000 on, currently up for sale, and I've got a BMW that I owe about $38,000 on. They're both upside down a little bit, the boat, mainly because of the broker. So I'm wondering, do you think I get rid of both and then just cash flow the difference. What's your household income? About $240,000.

And I've got about a quarter million dollars in non-mortgage debt. It's about $240,000, actually, including the boat, the car, everything. Okay. You know, 401K, I got it all. You obviously got a great income. Your income's almost as big as your appetite for toys. Yeah. What do you do for a living?

TV, camera, and believe it or not. Good for you. Well, you're killing it, man. Okay. So the rule of thumb that we use, and you read this in the Total Money Makeover, is two things when it comes to things with motors in them, boats, cars, trucks, sea-dos, tractors, lawn tractors, whatever. Add up everything that's got a motor in it. If it's over half your annual income,

then you have too much invested in things that are going down in value because everything that has a motor in it goes down in value quickly. Especially boats. Yeah, boats. I've got a couple boats. They go down really fast so uh then then uh in addition to that uh now that if that's the only two vehicles you have you're under half your annual income so you technically meet that the second the second guideline is can i be debt free in two

years except for my house and still keep these things if i like these things and the answer to that question for you is no and so yes you have to sell the boat you probably need to sell the beamer but you definitely have to sell the boat yeah yeah it's up for sale for sure so just uh cash flow the difference i guess on the on the i think i'll take a tax return and apply that towards the... Yeah, yeah, just knock the mouth that you're upside down. So here's the thing. You told me you got about a quarter million dollars in debt, right?

Yeah. Okay, and if we lose $88,000 of that, that gets us down to about $170,000 in debt, not counting the Beamer. So can you pay $170,000 in two years? That's $85,000 a year. Be tough, probably. You can probably do it, though. Gotcha.

If you want to keep the Beamer and you put yourself on a two-year schedule to be debt-free, then keep it. It fits. It's not out of line. But if getting rid of it is the thing that allows you to be debt-free in two years, get rid of it. You can get you another one later. You make plenty of money. When you don't have any payments, you'll be able to save up and buy whatever car you want. And for that matter, later on, get you another boat.

Save up and pay cash for it. You make good money. But right now, this stuff's got you in a stranglehold, and we've got to break it. If you do this one simple thing that we all do, you are literally at risk of being hacked and someone stealing what you've worked so hard for. Do you ever use public Wi-Fi? I'm talking about getting online at a coffee shop, a store, the airport, or even at home. Hackers can use a simple $100 device to mimic Wi-Fi, and with just a little bit of skills, they can take over your financial life. This means you may think you're on your bank's site or app or securely making that purchase online,

but hackers could see and steal that information. That's why I trust CyberGhost VPN. CyberGhost thinks about cybercrime so you don't have to. You can try it for free for seven days. Protect up to seven internet devices and keep all of your internet connections secure. That's CyberGhost VPN. Download it today from your app store and be secure in seconds.

In the lobby of Ramsey Solutions, Ken and Amber are with us. Hey, guys, how are you? Hey, Dave, how are you doing? Welcome, welcome. Where are you guys from? We're from Bourbon A, Illinois. Which is near Chicago. Okay, I thought so. Good. Welcome to Nashville. Thank you. And all the way down here in the rain to do your debt-free screen. That's right. Love it. How much have you guys paid off? So we paid off $81,000 in 15 months, Dave.

Boom, look at that. And your range of income during that time? We started at about 85 and ended at 140. Wow. Awesome. What do you all do for a living? Well, I teach at a public high school. I teach history. And I'm an IT solution salesman, Dave.

Good for you. Excellent. Well done, guys. So what kind of debt was the $81,000? So we had a little bit of everything, Dave. We had a credit card. We had student loans, cars, you name it. What was the most of it?

Most of it was student loans, Dave. Okay, cool, cool. So how long have you two been married? 18, 19 months now. Ah, so that's what started it all. That's right. You get married and come home from the honeymoon and go, uh-oh, we've got to clean this up. That's right.

Exactly right. So tell me the story. What happened? Well, when we were dating and when we got engaged, Ken was very, very much involved in listening to your podcast all the time. Every time we were in the car for more than 20 minutes, he was putting the podcast on. He's a real romantic, isn't he? Yes, yes. And it got to the point where, I mean, you reference like Dave Ramsey becomes a four-letter word during our engagement and dating period. But when we got married, he bought the Total Money Makeover and he's like, hey, I really actually want you to

read this and get engaged. And sitting and actually reading it for myself got me on board, and then we just tackled it. Okay. In spite of the fact that it ruined all your dates. Yeah. Okay. So after you read it, you kind of went, okay, I see what all the fuss is about. It's worth doing this. It would be a great goal for us right here after getting married to tear into this,

and it was a great goal. Congratulations. Very well done. Okay. So, Ken, other than the fact that you overdid the Dave Ramsey thing, how did you get her to do this? So we really just sat down and talked about, well, why do we want to do this? I did go about it the wrong way by just saying we need to do this, we need to do this. But instead I said, well, why, dear, why should we do this?

And this is why I want to do it. And listened to her her why as well today okay so what was your why Amber um for me I want to have the opportunity whenever God blesses us with children to be able to stay at home with them and not have to worry about money in that respect so that's about as good a one as I can think of yeah that's a's a good why. Yeah, very good. And so, all right, now we sit down, we do a budget, and it's game on. That's right, Dave. How hard was that? You know, that first conversation was like, does Amber really want to do this? It's kind of just me staring at it.

But as we kept going along, she actually started to be the one really driving the thing, Dave. Uh-oh. You created a monster then. That's right. All right. thing, Dave. Uh-oh. You created a monster then. That's right. All right. Okay, cool. So what do you tell people when people find out you've only been married 18 months, and during that time you paid off $81,000 worth of debt? They always ask you, how'd you do that? What do you tell them the secret is? I would say we usually encourage people, and we've taught a couple of FPU classes with our church at this point with some young couples.

Wow, thank you. Oh, no problem. Thank you. We just encourage them to communicate, and that's really the biggest thing is being on a team and coming up with your whys together. And like I said, communication. It taught us a lot about each other and helped us in our marriage early on, not just talking about money but talking about everything. So it was a huge blessing. When you start talking about your why, you're really talking about what your dreams for your whole life is.

And, you know, money is one of the ways you get there. And so because you're going to need some usually to get to most of those dreams. Because most things, either they cost money or you're giving up some money for the thing, whatever it is, you know, either way. So good, good for you guys. So communication is huge. What else? So the budget was also really huge, Dave, by actually sitting down and looking at it. At first we were like, are we really able to do this? But then finally diving into the budget and being able to talk with other people about, hey, once you get your numbers together and actually look at it, it really isn't as bad as you may have anticipated.

Yeah, the monster in the closet is a bigger monster than the one in the middle of the kitchen table. That's right. He shrinks when you get him out of the closet and look at the details. Yeah, it's because it's the worry and all that stuff around it. It takes the drama out of it when you just write it all out. So what happened to your income from $85,000 to $140,000 in 15 months? Well, yeah, Dave. I mean, I'm a salesman. You can obviously see my wife. You can see I'm a pretty good salesman at that. So that's where things came from. So you just got after it.

You had a goal. It's game on. That's right, Dave. Yeah, good. Good for you. Well done. You're obviously a good salesman. Two or three sets of proof for that. Yeah, good. Good for you. Well done. You're obviously a good salesman. Two or three sets of proof for that. Yeah, good. Very well done. Well, we've got a copy of Chris Hogan's book for you, Retire Inspired. We want that to be the next chapter in your story, that you're not only debt-free, but now you've become millionaires and outrageously generous along the way, okay? That's right.

Thank you. On the way. Love it, love it. Congratulations, you guys. Thank you. Very proud of you. Thank you, Dave. Very proud of you.'s right. Thank you. On the way. Love it, love it. Congratulations, you guys. Thank you. Very proud of you. Thank you, Dave. Very proud of you.

All right, Ken and Amber, Chicago, Illinois, $81,000 paid off in 15 months, making $85,000 to $140,000. Count it down. Let's hear a debt-free scream. Three, two, one. We're debt free. Love it, love it. Way to go, you guys.

Woo-hoo. That's awesome right there. I love it. Heather is in Little Rock, Arkansas. Hi, Heather. How are you? I'm great, Dave. How are you?

Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay. Heather, how are you? I'm great, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve. What's up? Okay, my husband and I have been married for almost six years now. We've been together for six years, going on seven. And he came into the relationship with a mortgage with his ex-fiance. And through a turn of events, she now lives in that house, and he signed a quick claim deed to get off of the legal end. Well, it's still on his credit. He's still liable for the mortgage.

Yes, he's still liable for the mortgage. And so we just recently started implementing your plan, and that's one of the hurdles that is on his part of the credit. So we're wondering how he can get off of the mortgage. So he bought a house with a fiancée. They were never even married. No, they were not. And then he quit claims it to her. Yes.

Gave up the asset and kept the liability dumb all right um because he lost all leverage so there's no agreement here anywhere other than he just tossed her the keys and walked away yes and stayed on the mortgage all right so do you know anything about the mortgage um i know that it's through chase bank i think do you know the loan do you know the interest rate uh i do not know the interest rate um he probably there's probably still 50 to 60 thousand dollars left on it to pay but i don't know the interest rate or anything like that okay and she's obviously just going to camp there forever yes Yes, and she's still paying the mortgage. We're not.

Yeah, you just have what's called a contingent liability, meaning that if she doesn't pay it, you're going to get stuck with a bad credit and a potential foreclosure. Yeah. All right, and what's Cheryl's household income? Right now it's just $21,000. I'm about to go back to work. I was taking care of, helping take care of.

So what will your household income be? I would say probably $30,000 or $35,000. So you make $10,000? Total. Well, it's just part-time. I'll be making $475 an hour. Okay, how much debt have you got, not counting this fiancé house? Oh, my goodness.

There's probably, I haven't figured it up exactly, but it's probably $90,000 in debt, the majority of that student loans. Yeah. And not making any money as a result of that education. Wow. Okay, I would worry about that debt before I worry about this mortgage. If you can get out of it when you're out of debt, and the only thing left standing is that mortgage,

and she still hasn't paid it off or refinanced it at that point i might offer to pay her refinance cost in order to get her to refinance it into her own name and maybe at a better interest rate or something this is the dave ramsey show Thank you. Minneapolis is calling. Kyle is with us. Hey, Kyle, welcome to the Dave Ramsey Show. Hi, Dave. How are you? Better than I deserve.

How can I help? Great. So I'm 33 years old, and I just started watching your YouTube videos a couple days ago and I'm just loving your content here. So I plan on wanting to basically pay off my entire and then just pay it off the next eight years, or just leave it as is on the 30-year because I was a first-time homebuyer. Just wanted to know your thoughts. Well, the only reason you would refinance is not to go from a 30 to a 15 to an 8 to a 7. The only reason you would refinance is if you can save on interest rates substantially

because you can take on interest rates substantially. Because you can take a 30-year mortgage, if you figure out what a 10-year mortgage would be on that same balance and pay that extra, you'll pay a 30 off in 10 or a 15. So what is your current interest rate on your mortgage? I'm at 4.5. It's not going to be worth it for you to refinance in today's market. You might save a half a point. You might save three-quarters of a point. But, you know, it's not going to save you enough to fool with it. I would just calculate out what it takes for that mortgage to be paid off by the time you're 40 and say that's how much extra I need to pay above my, you know,

compare that to your regular payment, and the difference is the extra. Okay. So I owe $117,000 on it, and I am a saver. So I still have – I got about $40K in savings, $20,000 in stocks, and, you know, $73K and a $41K, $18K in a Roth IRA, and like $25K in a tax-sheltered annuity. So should I put any of that money down right away just to maybe even help with that? Anything that is non-retirement that will not be penalized,

which would be the $20K in stock and some of your $40K, that's your total picture. You need an emergency fund out of that $40K of three to six months of expenses. But what is your income? I that $40,000 of three to six months of expenses. But what is your income? I make $100,000. Okay. So if we said three to six months of expenses would be, say, $20,000, we could take $20,000 of the $40,000 and we could take the $20,000 in stock. That would be $40,000 towards your $115,000.

That would get you down to just $65,000 owed. I think everything else was in retirement, if I heard you right. That's correct. Or it was a penalty involved because it was an annuity. Yep. And then I would limit my saving, my investing, because you're doing a really good job there, but I would limit it to 15% of your income while you go ahead and knock that $65,000 out. And I'm assuming you have no other debt, right?

I do have a $7,000 in debt, but that's at zero interest, and I'll have that paid off in the next two or three months. Okay. I would just go ahead and pay that off now. Okay. And then whatever you were going to put towards that, use that to put towards the mortgage extra later. So use the $7,000 you would put towards that use that to put towards the mortgage extra later so use the seven thousand you would put it towards that out of your income to pay down the house faster but uh so

really we're talking about putting around forty thousand bucks in uh give or take uh thirty to five or so towards your mortgage at this point and be a hundred percent debt free as soon as possible interest rates irrelevant in terms of consumer debt. The reason it's irrelevant is it makes you look stupid if you have 18% interest on your credit card, but really when you're paying it off very, very fast, mathematically it's not costing you much on the interest. What's costing you is the cash flow and the risk

and this idea that you're burdened down with stuff. So, I mean, if you could borrow a million dollars of 0%, you wouldn't do it, not if you're smart anyway. James is with us in Boise, Idaho. Hi, James. How are you? Good. Thanks for taking my call,

and thanks for always sharing your knowledge with the rest of us. Thank you. How can I help? I had a quick question. I'm new to this money-saving lifestyle. I started late. I'm 26 years old. So I'm trying to get my girlfriend on board with me to go through the process of saving for our future.

We're planning on being together for the long term, you know. And I'm fully into it. Now I'm trying to figure out a way to get her on the same page so that we're not clashed. Okay. Well, the first thing you do is you don't use my name so much it becomes a cuss word. Okay. The second thing is don't talk about what we're going to do with money. Talk about why we're going to do it.

And it's like so when you say we're going to be together long term, I'm assuming you're talking about getting married. Yes, sir. Okay. And so you can talk about, say, you know, let's say someday, honey, that we were getting married and we would want to, like, be wealthy so that we could travel and be generous and retire with dignity. We would have to get control of this money because the only way people end up with money is on purpose.

They never accidentally get rich. No one looks up starting from nothing and says, I have $5 million, and no one looks up and goes, how'd that happen? You know, that never happens. It's like always very intentional, very methodical, and, you know, we're going to be on purpose, just like you are with your marriage. You know, nobody accidentally has a good marriage. You actually have to focus on learning about marriage and learning about, you know, letting the other person win and not being selfish and caring about their feelings.

And, you know, it's called a relationship. And so it's an intentional act, though. It is not a natural human act. You have to stop and go, this is what I'm going to do. This is how I'm going to raise kids. You have to enter discomfort and pay a price with any area of your life you're going to win with. And so don't talk about we need to not go out to eat. We need to clip coupons.

We need to sell your car. Don't talk about that stuff. Talk about where we want to go and then start asking questions. What do you think we need to do in order to get there? Dream with her. Chris Hogan in his book, Retire Inspired, and when he's speaking, he always says, to dream in HD, high-definition dreams, very detailed, very clear dreams. When you lay out your exact dream.

I talked to a lady this weekend. It was pretty amazing. She said, I want to go to Venice, Italy. I want to stay in this hotel in Venice, Italy for four days, and then I want to take a yacht, and I to go to the greek island of santorini and i want to spend a week there i mean she had it detailed out she knew exactly where she was going to go where she was going to stay how she was going to be transported and so you can run a budget out on that in a heartbeat once you have your you know and still like oh someday i'd kind

of like to go maybe sort of towards europe you You know, that's different, right? So you get a very detailed, high-definition dream that the two of you both buy into and agree to. Then you can pay a price to win. Then she'll pay that price with you, and you start talking about marriage and that kind of stuff. Now, don't combine your money with somebody you're not married to. Just because you're shacking up, don't combine your money. That'll get you in all kinds of messes it's a bad idea don't do that at all you know people ask me sometimes that's a it's an interesting discussion this high definition dreaming thinking about your future very very

very clearly it's kind of a nerdy exercise if you think about it but then it's really not it's kind of a dreamer exercise you know sharon and i when we first started this company our kids were little and people say how did you work the hours that you work to start and then grow that company and you were gone all the time and how did you do that and your children survived and your marriage survived and all that it's because we weren't looking at the moment we were looking past the moment we were living like no one else so that later we could live and give like no one else. So like if I was going out on a book tour and I was going to be gone for six weeks, which is like forever for somebody like me, I can't stand being gone that long.

But for six weeks and Sharon's left there with three little kids, which is like torture. How does she get through that and not be bitter at me at the company? How do I get through that and not get so homesick I can't breathe? Because we're living like no one else so that later we can live like no one else. And we told the kids, hey, this book is paying us some good money, so we're going to go do this. And when I get home, about six weeks later, after I get home, we're going to Disney World.

So, you know, you paint a high-definition picture out there in the future that allows you to walk through the crap you have to walk through to win. And that's true in anybody's life, you know. People go to the Y and work out because it's fun, but there's just a few of them. Most people that go work out, they work out because they're going to go through that pain to get the result. You've got to go through the pain to get the result. That's what it comes down to. But you've got to have the result clearly defined in your mind,

and the more clearly defined it is, the more you're able to walk through the garbage that's necessary to win. That puts this hour of the Dave Ramsey Show in the books. Hey, it's Kelly, associate producer and phone screener for the Dave Ramsey Show. This episode is over, but if you heard about a product or service and didn't have a chance to write it down, don't worry. We list everything that is mentioned during this episode in the podcast show notes section. Thanks for listening.